Ordinary Monsters — Justin Bond (Mongrel Empire Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Ordinary Monsters.  Justin Bond.  Mongrel Empire Press.  Norman, Oklahoma.  2017.

"And as you lie in bed

like an effigy of yourself

it is the ordinary that comes to save you."

                                                                                                         Linda Pastan

                                                                                                         The Ordinary

Justin Bond's Ordinary Monsters blooms open like some splendid bruise you have to touch just to see how much it is going to hurt.  Then you need to reassure yourself, was that pain or pleasure, and you touch the bruise once more.

Perhaps comparing poetry to a bruise is unfair and misleading but Bond can stand the heat.  These poems are plain beautiful, and wise, and witty.

Today's book of poetry can be clueless, and clueless we were, not realizing that Justin Bond was gay.  This man's lovely love poems transcend gender.  Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, we take that as a given.  Bond takes up some of that territory between love and lust, he uses these tight poems to bridge that gap.

The Right Way to Want Me

The

way

Madonna

wants

to 

devour

Lady Gaga

probably

head

first

strand

by

strand

of 

bleached

blonde

ambition

the 

super

ego

subsuming

the

id

unless

you

would 

consider

that

reductive

...

Justin Bond just comes off so damned smart with his big heart and compassionate brain.  Ordinary Monsters made Today's book of poetry laugh, cry and even momentarily, uncomfortably horny.  That particular poem is one my lovely wife of twenty-five years will probably want to read.  (Hello Sweetie)

The clumsy point Today's book of poetry is trying to make is that these poems are universal.  By being honest with himself Bond unveils some of the deep truths we are all tethered to regardless of our preferences in plumbing.

There is a real hopeful stance to Justin Bond's poetry.  Ordinary Monsters is dense with optimism in the face of overwhelming odds, and the reader will follow Bond anywhere he cares to go.  After the first couple of poems of Ordinary Monsters there was no doubt about Today's book of poetry being a Justin Bond fan.                                                                                        

The Wolf on His Deathbed, Remorseless

Let it not be forgotten
that I was no more or less
than the sum of my instincts.

Would you blame me for hunger?
A girl moved like flame through the forest.
Even now she smolders the brush of those dead years.

Blood is untamable.
She was weak, I was not,
and this world will not let you choose.

...

And after the "wolf" poem, Today's book of poetry knew we were in deep.  Mr. Bond can burn with the best.

Last evening, Today's book of poetry was on the front porch with the fore mentioned K, we were talking about Wisława Szymborska, because it was her birthday.  Later today I will pull out some Szymborska from the stacks and add them to the reading pile on K's side of the bed.  K has a very low tolerance for bad, so-so and mediocre poetry.  I only dare leave her "the best of the best of the best" as Rip Torn would have said if Men In Black were about poetry.  I won't hesitate to add Bond to K's reading pile either.

Ordinary Monsters

Once when I was a child
walking alone to my grandma's house
I saw something scary in the woods.
I still remember the snap of the twig
like a crunching of bone
that startled me silent mid-song,
the dun-colored fur covering the leg
that stepped out from behind the trunk
of an old pecan tree,
foreign and sapling-thick.
How I ran, clumsily and blindly, fearing
the thing all children secretly fear most:
the fairytale come to life.

We grow up and the world grows
smaller. The monsters it breeds
have become a more ordinary variety,
hairy-legged and hungry,
some wearing the faces of people
I tell myself I might want to love.
But even as I feel myself opening
to receive them, I shut my eyes tight
as two fists, I can't bear to look back
at the forest behind me.

...

Ordinary Monsters made for an excellent morning read here at Today's book of poetry.  The one complication was that as we don't have air conditioning in the Today's book of poetry offices, we were forced into the basement to get out today's blog/review.  There's a big fan on the box where I've got my computer.  My computer itself sits on it's own "cooling fan" base.  But sometimes things burn up - it was 35 C in Ottawa yesterday, with the humidex it was 110 F, hotter than Baghdad.

It's going to remain very hot all week so I've given orders to cover up the windows and doors.  But it is too late; our first floor is blistering hot, the second floor has turned to liquid magma, last time I checked it was 374 C.

The staff reading itself was great, Bond speaks with such a lovely, almost gallant voice and his poems make the reader sound intelligent.  Our crew like that.

Justin Bond reminded Today's book of poetry of the wide variety of voices needed to make up a choir, and they are out there in the poetry ether, yawping Whitmanesque, brilliant voices.

Gay poet, gay poetry.  Today's book of poetry is absolutely certain this poetry transcends my ability/desire to label it.  If you are a regular Today's book of poetry reader you will probably be at the point where you just let the poems speak for themselves.  That would always be excellent advice, but dear reader, please know, please trust me, when I say that we have a poetry loving staff working hard to bring you the very best poetry we can find - regardless of gender or choice of public restroom.

Justin Bond's poems are simply beautiful beasts you'll recognize as they work their way through to your poetry heart.

Justin Bond

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Justin Bond was born, raised and educated in Oklahoma. He is the author of the chapbook Going Native (Red Bird 2014). His work has been included as part of The Pulitzer Remix (a National Poetry Month initiative), performed in Emotive Fruition’s 2016 Pride performance, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lives and works in New York City.

BLURBS

"All of the new thinking is about loss," Robert Hass once wrote. "In that, it resembles all of the old thinking." Gay poet Justin Bond's gorgeous debut collection pays beautiful, painful homage to this human tradition. These pages steep the reader in passion and grief, stark and gleaming. They nourish us with lust, lyricism and the will to go on, which is, as Bond says, "part of what elevates us above a clumsy gallop of meat and bone.”
—Ruth L. Schwartz, winner of the National Poetry Series prize,
Autumn House Press Poetry Prize, Anhinga Prize for Poetry, AWP Award Series prize.

"The story of us,” writes Justin Bond, “is the story of America.” The smart, insightful, and revelatory poems of Ordinary Monsters are themselves stories of us (both reader and writer) but also of this vast and bizarre country.
And like our country, Bond’s poems are diverse, ambitious, and explosive.
Walt Whitman would love their big, expansive, democratic heart. You will too.
—Dean Rader, winner of the 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize,
2010 Writer's League of Texas Poetry Prize, and the George H. Bogin Award from the Poetry Society of America

mongrelempire.org

701

DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

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and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ [Sharps] - Stevie Howell (Icehouse Poetry)

Today's book of poetry:
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
[Sharps].  Stevie Howell.  Icehouse Poetry.  An Imprint of Goose Lane Editions.  Fredericton, New Brunswick.  2014.

The Today's book of poetry offices are empty this morning.  The windchill it is -39C here in Ottawa - but get this, it has warmed up from yesterday.

Milo, our head tech and Kathryn, our new intern, both called in this morning with a case of the St. Valentine's Day Flu.  The same telephone number popped up on the screen for both calls, quelle surprise.

Happy, happy, happy Valentine's Day my poetry puppets.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ [Sharps] is made up of sledgehammer blows and razor-sharp ax swings.  Get into it or get the hell out of the way, Stevie Howell cut Today's book of poetry to shreds.  At every turn of the page Howell was able to bust up a different corner of my heart.

If you talk Rip Torn, if you dedicate a poem to Jimmy Webb you damned well better know the way to Phoenix and Galveston and every damned thing in between.  And Howell does!  She knows everything in some dark twist of fate. [Sharps] is an attempt to go public with her larceny and after reading it you're going to want more.

No Good

There's only one thing you can do

With a sawed-off rifle, a low IQ, and curiosity

about human biology.

                                            You wake at sunset, yourself still,

a storm-eye of boredom, drink and LSD.

The only thing that 

                                             ever made sense, was tidy or clean:

how convenient and pre-emptive excuses are,

arising out of capitulated-to

                                             desires, imbibing, cussing, so many

'good times.'

We can assume you were estranged

from yourself that night. But this is even truer

sober. We can guess your past

                                             is a neighbour's unfinished basement,

and when you recline you feel his breath

on your freckles again.

                                             You are a victim too, and the violence

of your life is all you've ever known. It gulps to unwind

its weaving, unknot, and breathe,

                                              but undone can't be done

by doing.

Rabbit trapped, quickening,

you march a man through a thicket, where no one

can hear him plead.

                                              You crush by moving, mulch

the recently fallen autumn leaves, snap branches,

snag open the tear in your jeans.

Your panting.

His panting.

It's a kind of transfusion.

...

There is some dark, dank and dangerous territory in Stevie Howell's world and she is fearless.   Todays' book of poetry was dazed and confused several times before I cracked dawn at the end of Howell's [Sharps].  The language in these poems comes off of the page as though an Al Capone tommy-gun were spitting the words at you in a ratatatatatat exclamation, Howell spills it over the sides of the cup, she turns up the volume, more, more more more.

[Sharps] is exciting stuff  -  full stop.

Howell has the ability to both kick and kiss your ass at the same time.  She is a poetry contortionist.

Airporter driver, ex-European tour guide, through Canmore says,

Canmore smokeless coal afforded war destroyers their

stealth. Stealthier. Carved out coal beds,

the town eroded, as a cough strip-mines and deepens.

The mine was shuttered in the seventies.

An open-mouthed, boomerang valley. The Olympic luge

was going to save it all, they said,

but the price was dear. Up on that peak, it is coiled and asleep.

They used if for that film about

the Jamaican boblsed team, Cool Runnings.

Now the wealth is folks clamouring in who aren't allowed

to buy a home in Banff. They come to ski

or hunt and try to stay -- royalty, celebrities, you name it.

But you have to own a business in town.

One woman, a doctor, schemed and plotted: promised

she'd open a medical office. Council said yes.

She bought a chalet up the side of a hill, leased a storefront on Buffalo,

placed a desk and phone inside, and never crossed

the threshold again. A bitter pill.

They filmed Brokeback Mountain on the Three Sisters. Little Big Man.

See those rocks there, those fingers

of rock like ribs? They say it's a man reclined. The Edge was filmed

up on that range. A terrible film, we can agree.

Alec Baldwin, his grimace and spittle-coated crescendos, beseeching

Sir Anthony Hopkins: How the fuck are we

going to get out of this hellhole? At the free screening

for the residents, we screamed: Look behind you,

you idiot! At the highway!

They dug animal tunnels beneath the road, like a colliery, and paved

animal bridges above. Cougars stalk their prey

from the bridges. Chain-link along the road discourages animals,

but doesn't repel them completely. Years ago, the big fire

cut us off from Banff. Wilder than anything Hollywood could dream--

smoke hurling bears, wolves, elk out of the woods--

ursus jaws, saber teeth, antlers, nautilus claws,

fur for miles, pummelling the fence,

droving their own hearts into the wire.

...

TBOP would be remiss if we didn't mention the spectacular cover on [Sharps].  Julie Scriver has given us an almost perfect looking book.  Icehouse Poetry is making us all look better.

The best part of the Today's book of poetry world is opening up a book like Stevie Howell's [Sharps]  If you love poetry, and we do, books like this fill you with hope, not necessarily in the world, but in poetry's ability to give you a real experience.  Maryse Holder would have said "to give sorrow words."

[Sharps] is an ontological scat of particular beauty, it is a roller coaster ride worthy of St. Charles of Parker.  Howell isn't trying to impress on us a system for a better understanding of God or faith but instead is sharing her rather unpredictable exuberance to light up some dark corners.

Ballad of Blood Hotel

A film on Bill Callahan,

I was to be the soundwoman.

The director and I rode a limo through Manhattan,

rented my equipment, then he queried what

I thought of every suit jacket he tried on at Kenneth Cole Reaction.

He insisted I sleep in

his 1-bedroom apartment,

informed me we would share a room when we visited

Drag City. Why didn't I move to New York to become

his live-in assistant? He darkened when I said I had a concert ticket

and plans that evening.

He filmed me while muttering

'I might not let you go -- and who'd know if I didn't?'

I made a fake call to a 'friend' as proof

someone was waiting for me. There's footage of this.

Outside, from a sticky payphone,

I cold-called hotels getting 'no, no, no';

until a vacancy by the Hudson, a scoliotic mansion.

A man inside a bullet-proof terrarium, lined in wire,

with taped up chicken-scratch signs: No visitors in rooms.

TV show laugh tracks

ricocheted through the ingress.

Four locks. Inside, a double-hung window,

the faint waft of bleach. The sun-faded floor

highlighted a dark rectangle where the bed had once been.

A black cockroach

the size of a butterflied sausage

hustled across the plaster wall and clung

to the window screen. I pulled down the pane, trapped him

in the lower sash, and he body-drew a panicked infinity sign.

Sweat spurted

from my scalp as I staked

blattaria. Closet: One wire hanger.

Nightstand: Bible-less. Beneath the bed: Not one mote

of dust. Behind the headboard, instead of bugs, an inch-wide

ray of blood sprayed

down the wall, thick as a surveyor's

fluorescent cross on an arterial. A line

steadied by force, the splatter deviated from mean,

skewed left. An ax, no doubt, one blow, to a person prone.

I kneeled on the bed and wept

about Woody Allen, Joan Didion, even Billy Joel's

insipid hit, A New York State of Mind. A class action lawsuit

ought to be launched over the decades of artists' propaganda that lures

you to New York, only to find yourself using a rooming house's

communal washroom,

where a man is asleep or expired

in a shower stall, door agape, water pelting his rump

like an instagram of a foreign countryside. 'Well, that's one way to escape.'

Bill Callahan fired the filmmaker on the third day.

There's all this.

There's all this.

There's all this unedited tape.

...

Stevie Howell just won over some serious fans here at Today's book of poetry.  I can hardly wait to foist this upon the troops when they return tomorrow.  /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ [Sharps] is so good you should wear gloves, it might cut you. 

It got me right to the bone.

Stevie Howell

(photo by Neil Harrison)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stevie Howell’s poetry and criticism have appeared in publications such as The Walrus, Maisonneuve, The Globe and Mail, and National Post.
Her poems have been finalists for the 2013 Montreal International Poetry Prize and the 2012 Walrus Poetry Prize.
She is from Scarborough, lives near the Mink Mile, and studies psychology.

BLURB

"These poems are coded emergency and emergent code; hail, cut glass, cathedrals, systems, skeletons, and scorched earth. Stevie Howell has found a fault line underwriting Reality and turned this fissure, this terrible brokenness, into a lens. She sees the queasy, exact particular and can phase from its contours into metaphysics and back before we sense the ground shifting. As astounding debut. An astonishing collection, full stop."

     - Ken Babstock, author of Methodist Hatchet

Stevie Howell

Live at the Thirty-fifth Taddle Creek Happening

(June 12, 2015)

video: Taddle Creek

gooselane.com

437

DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.